Failure: Her Greatest Fear
by The Steppy One
Summary: A Missing Moment from Deathly Hallows. Hermione destroying Hufflepuff's Cup. Angst a plenty.


:waves:

Don't worry, I'm not writing (much) instead of Searching, and I have definitely started it, there's a good chunk written, it's just taking me a long time. Hopefully this will become apparent when I post it!

I wrote this as part of a 'missing moment' challenge over on LiveJournal and thought I'd put it on here too! If there's anything weird with the formatting, i.e. there's i /i anywhere, let me know. I tried to find all the buggers but may have missed the odd one.

Reviewing would make me very happy. :D

Step ;) xxx

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**Failure: Her Greatest Fear**

'The Basilisk fangs!'

Ron's sudden exclamation made Hermione jump. Her heart leapt as she realised he had found a solution to one of their many problems. A shiver ran through her for more than one reason.

'Of course!' she said, her excitement obvious on her face, but then her heart sank. 'But we can't get in! We need Harry to open up the Chamber!'

Hermione realised a few members of Dumbledore's Army were a little too close for comfort. She gently pulled Ron's elbow towards the corner of the room. He looked around him and realised why she was moving him.

'There's no way we can get in without speaking Parseltongue,' she said, almost hissing to keep herself unheard.

She saw Ron's lips twitch but he didn't say what was making him snigger.

'I know we can't speak it, but I know what Harry said to open the locket when we destroyed that one. I might be able to make the same noise and open the thing. It's worth a try, isn't it? And in all fairness, what else can we do?'

She knew what this would mean; venturing out into the castle, without an invisibility cloak and liable to meet people who would love to make them their new subjects of torture when teaching the Dark Arts. But really, what else _could_ they do?

'Nothing!'

He thought that the next time he would be back at school, everything would be back to normal, but it wasn't. He hated being in the school when it was like this. It was too quiet, it was too cold, and he could have sworn there was the odd spatter of blood on the walls or the floor.

He'd had to forcibly steer Hermione away from the set of chains hanging from the high ceiling, the metal cuffs on the end rusty and caked in blood, and had forced himself not to even contemplate who might have been a victim of them or what small, insignificant misdemeanour had been performed to justify time in them.

After what seemed like hours they reached the girls bathroom. For a fleeting second, he felt like the twelve year old he was when he first stepped in there; afraid of something big, scary and unknown, and wanting to do everything he could to help stop it.

'Ron?' Hermione asked from inside the bathroom. She looked out at him, still in the corridor.

'Huh? Oh, sorry.'

He crossed the threshold and quietly closed the door behind him. He propped the two broomsticks they would need to get out of the Chamber against the wall and made sure they weren't going to fall over.

They walked up to the sink with the serpent on the tap; He remembered which one it was, without having to search for the tiny detail.

'Well, here we go!'

His stomach squirmed a little. He felt like he was taking an exam, except this time, a lot more depended on him getting the right answer.

He felt Hermione's hand close around his and smiled when she squeezed it lightly. He squeezed hers back and risked an embarrassed glance at her. Her eyes met his and he felt his ears go hot.

He cleared his throat and made what he thought was the sound Harry had made when telling the locket to open. He hadn't realised he had closed his eyes until he opened them, wanting to see the sink descend into the floor and make the long deep tunnel that was to take them to the Chamber of Secrets.

He huffed in annoyance when nothing happened. He tried again, and once again nothing happened.

He growled in frustration and clumsily pushed his hair away from his eyes.

'You can do it, Ron, I know you can,' Hermione said quietly.

He felt her squeeze his hand again and looked at her. He couldn't help but mirror her as she smiled and then took another deep breath to calm himself down. He listened to Harry say the word, or rather sound, in his head once more and broke it down into its individual noises, as if he were breaking a word into syllables. He mouthed the sounds without actually saying them a couple of times and then all at once, in quite a hurry, strung them together and hissed and spluttered the noise into existence.

Both of them jumped back from the sink as it started to move.

'Ha!' Ron exclaimed. 'I did it!'

'I told you, you could!' Hermione replied.

Without thinking, Ron released her hand and pulled her towards him into a brief hug. Realising what he was doing, he let go and shuffled uncomfortably.

He walked over to where he had propped the brooms and tucked them under his arm.

'I'd say 'ladies first', but, I don't think that would be the chivalrous thing to do this time!'

Hermione smiled. 'How about we go together?'

He watched as she held out her hand to him and he took it.

'Together it is!'

'As much as I'm happy no one did remove this dirty Basilisk from the Chamber, the fact that a forty foot snake corpse is decaying underneath a bathroom near a major source of the plumbing to the entire castle is really something that should have been dealt with!'

She couldn't help but smile when Ron laughed aloud at her comment.

Trying her hardest to breathe as lightly as possible around the dead snake, she picked up the two other fangs Ron had managed to pull from the jaw of the snake.

'Do you think we've got enough?' she asked Ron.

Ron looked up at her and then the pile of fangs at her feet.

'I reckon so. I don't think we can carry many more without dropping them.'

'And we've got to carry them and fly on a broomstick!'

'That's no problem!'

'For you maybe!' she smiled, a little embarrassed.

'Don't worry, I won't let you fall off. If you want, you could…er…sit behind me and I'd fly us out of here. Only if you wanted to of course.'

'Thank you, Ron. I might take you up on that offer.'

She liked the fact that he had gone slightly pink, even if it made her stomach squirm.

'So, shall we get on with it then?'

'Get on with what?' she asked him, confused.

He looked straight at her, half laughing and half obviously confused.

'Well, what we came down here to do, destroy the Horcrux!'

'You want to do it in here?' she shrieked a little louder than was strictly necessary.

'Well, where else would we do it? We can hardly do it in the Room of Requirement, can we? The less people that know about this the better. And, in all fairness, I think we're safest down here, don't you? Less likely to get caught.'

'I suppose,' she agreed

'And, it's not that bad down here!'

She couldn't help but frown at him and looked at the dead snake behind him and then back into his eyes.

'Okay,' Ron said with a smile, 'apart from the huge dead snake which isn't the nicest smelling thing in the world, Slytherin was quite the interior designer I must say!'

She laughed out loud.

'Okay then,' she took a deep breath and took the cup out of her robes. 'How shall we do it?'

'Well, as much as piercing the metal might be quite hard, I think if you hold it with two hands and slam it down really hard, you'll be okay.'

Her stomach turned a little. It's not like she didn't want to help destroy the Horcrux, but she was a little alarmed when Ron had intimated she should be the one to destroy it.

'You, er…you think…you think I should do it?'

She knew her tone and hesitation got her message across. She didn't mind Ron knowing she was scared and wary of the whole thing, not at all. If she was honest, and as much as she didn't like it, she half hoped Ron would try and protect her from her fear.

'I do! I really do!'

Her eyes widened and her heart thumped in her chest. This wasn't what she expected.

'Harry did the diary, I…I did the locket, now you should do the cup. Harry said he i _knew_ that I should do the locket, well, it seems only right that you should do this one.'

She felt his eyes on him even though she was looking at the floor. She looked up at him, fear still radiating from her.

'I dunno, this whole thing, it's been like a rite of passage for the three of us, hasn't it? We've survived so far and we've learned quite a lot, I just think we should all experience this. It seems…right, somehow.'

She couldn't help but smile.

'When did you get so…I don't know…so wise?'

He smiled back at her and her fear ebbed a little.

'You wouldn't believe what spending time away from the two people who mean more to you than anything, when you know you need them and they might need you, will do to someone. It puts things into perspective a bit to say the least,' Ron replied quietly.

She nodded.

'There was no _might_ about it, Ron. We definitely needed you.'

Ron looked at the floor; Hermione knew she had made him feel uncomfortable. She sighed.

'I'm sorry, Ron, I didn't mean to make you feel guilty. I just wanted you to know that I— I mean, we, didn't function properly without you. Don't ever think anything else, okay?'

Ron nodded and smiled. 'Okay.'

He knew he would always feel guilty about leaving them, but he couldn't let that get to him now, they had more important things to worry about.

'Where do you think I should stab it?' Hermione asked him.

He stepped forwards and took the cup out of her hand. He looked at the badger on the front and ran his thumb over the engraving. He turned it in his hands and went to put his fingers inside to feel for any bumps or ridges in the metal.

He frowned. He couldn't push his fingers into the hollow of the cup. There was a force stopping anything getting in.

'No way!' he whispered.

'What?' he heard Hermione say, the panic obvious in her voice. 'What is it?'

'It's protected! Look!' He held it out in front of her and tried once more to press his fingers into the hollow of the cup. Once more he failed. 'The bit of his soul must be contained in there. The locket, it could be held _in_ it, but if there was nothing protecting the soul, it could have been damaged or tampered with. He had to put a barrier over the top to keep it safe. Do you think the Basilisk fang will get through it?'

Hermione took the cup from him and tried to push through the barrier.

'I don't know, we can only try I suppose.'

'Hermione, I know you're nervous about this, but I think you should do it, I really do. And I'm not just saying that because of all the mental stuff that'll come out of it—'

_'Mental stuff?'_ Hermione exclaimed.

He closed his eyes. He really should have phrased that better.

'When…when Harry and me were destroying the Locket, it knew I was going to try and destroy it. It said things, showed me things that I really didn't like to hear and see. It tried to turn me against Harry, and you, and played on all my fears. I have no idea if this'll do the same thing, but if it does, you just have to remember it's trying to warp the way you think, okay? Ignore everything it says and just stab it with the fang.'

He watched as Hermione opened her mouth a couple of times, obviously failing to find the words she wanted to say.

'You can do this, Hermione, you can.'

He put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her hoping to show her his trust in her through his gaze.

Hermione opened her mouth once more to say something, again said nothing, but nodded her head and attempted to twist her mouth into something of a smile.

He watched as she knelt down and placed the cup down in front of her, upright with the badger engraving facing her.

'Here goes,' she whispered.

She raised the largest of the fangs they had collected to shoulder height, held tightly in both hands and looked down at where she wanted to pierce the invisible barrier.

She took a deep breath and with all her strength, plunged the fang into the cup.

There was a high-pitched scream, and a force of some kind lifted Ron off his feet. He flew backwards and landed heavily on the floor away from Hermione. He skidded to a halt when he hit the decaying corpse of the snake. He looked up, desperately searching for Hermione, but she was surrounded by...something, and he could no longer see her.

'Hermione!'

The breath had been sucked out of her lungs and she was having difficulty drawing in the oxygen she needed.

Cold surrounded her and she shivered violently. She couldn't take her eyes off the cup; the fang had forged a hole in the barrier protecting the segment of soul in whatever form it was. The barrier was now black and visible to the eye and she could see something writhing through the hole.

_I need to stab it,_ she told herself over and over in her head. The air around her was still cold and she could feel it whipping her hair in all directions. She leant forward and picked up the cup in her left hand.

As soon as her fingertips touched the metal the rest of her hand was forced to make contact with the cup. She tried to move her hand and fingers in any way, but her joints had frozen.

She gasped as pain shot through her hand. Suddenly the cup went cold, colder than was comfortable to hold and she felt the sensation travel up through her arm. She tried to release her grip off the cup but couldn't. Part of her told her to take the cup in her other hand as well, but she realised this would make things worse so kept her other hand gripped around the Basilisk fang.

Her head fell back and her arms went limp when the cold hit her chest. She could feel it encase her heart as it thumped harder than she had ever known it too.

_'Hermione!'_

She could hear someone shouting her name.

_He doesn't care enough to come and help you, Hermione. He will never care for you, like you care for him._

She didn't know if the voice was inside her head or surrounding her.

She closed her eyes, knowing that she shouldn't listen to the soft voice, but it was as if the harder she tried to ignore it, the louder it became.

She opened her eyes and the wind that was surrounding her died down, she gasped when she saw a figure standing in front of her. She knew that the only reason Lavender Brown would be standing in front of her in whatever form it was, could only be to distract her from her task.

She looked through the semi transparent form of Lavender, who looked more beautiful than ever, and looked at Ron. She could see he was shouting at her but couldn't hear a thing. He was struggling against something, but she couldn't see what it was.

'He's not coming to help you, you know,' Lavender said as Hermione reached for the cup.

She ignored the words and looked at the cup still in her hand.

'He could help you, but he won't. He doesn't care enough to help you do this thing he insisted you do! He wanted to put you through this.'

Hermione closed her eyes. She hated the fact that the words were making her stomach squirm with sadness and fear.

'You could never be the person he wants, you know, Hermione. Ron needs someone who takes pride in the way she looks, who will show him how much she loves him by looking good for him. He shouldn't have to put up with someone who puts their book collection before herself, and him!'

'I wouldn't!' Hermione screamed, loathing herself for arguing back.

Lavender turned on the spot and walked towards Ron.

'What will you do when you fail him, Hermione? Because you will, at some point. You'll let him down and hurt him. You'll put your career before him, make him wait for you until you've done all the very important things Miss Hermione Granger expects herself to do.'

'I—'

She tried to argue, but she couldn't find the words. She'd thought those things, wondered whether she could balance the things she wanted to achieve in her career with her own personal life. A personal life she wanted Ron to be in more than anything.

Would she abandon him for her career? Could she make the decision to leave things she had dreamed about for years, for Ron? For anyone for that matter? Was she selfless enough to sacrifice some of the things she wanted for other people?

Or was she just selfish through and through?

'You know it's true,' Lavender continued. She had sat herself down next to Ron and was stroking her fingers through his hair.

She looked at Ron, and saw the dead Basilisk corpse had wound around him. He was trying his best to buck out of the spiral of decaying flesh but the more he struggled the tighter the coils became.

All at once her hearing came back to her.

'Hermione! _Please!_ Just stab it! It's not real! She's not real! _Come on Hermione, please!_'

He hadn't noticed that the snake reanimated until it was too late. He was trying to clear his head from being thrown across the Chamber when he saw the ghostly form of Lavender Brown materialise from whatever had been surrounding Hermione. He had tried to get up, to tell Hermione that it wasn't real, when he realised he couldn't move. The relatively thin tail end of the snake was already winding around his ankles and was slowly coiling further up his legs.

He had been so relieved when he could see Hermione again, but was devastated when the smoke, or whatever it had been that was stopping her from seeing her, changed into the one person who could distract Hermione from what she needed to do.

Lavender Brown.

The person he had gone to when he was angry with Hermione, for reasons that she didn't know, and which were even tenuous at best to him as well. He had been angry, he had been jealous and he had done possibly the worst thing he could. It wasn't fair on him, it wasn't fair on Lavender, and it really wasn't fair on Hermione.

He looked at the pale form of Lavender and tried to twist away from her touch. He couldn't actually feel anything, but he knew that it looked real. The more he twisted away, the tighter the dead snake squeezed him.

_Come on Weasley, show her you care about her and need her._

'Hermione!' he called once more, hoping his words were getting through to her.

He remembered what he had been like when he had been staring at that locket. He could hear Harry telling him what to do, and he knew that he should listen to him. But he couldn't tear his eyes away from the locket and what it was showing him. He was transfixed and couldn't help but listen to the thing tell him everything he didn't want to think about and fear, but did.

He pulled at the end of the tail and exclaimed aloud when he managed to pull it away from his legs. It flopped on the ground and Ron set about pulling at the next coil, desperately trying to loosen it in the smallest way so he could get some sort of leverage to manoeuvre himself out.

'There is one way to stop any of this becoming a problem, Hermione,' he heard Lavender say. He couldn't help but stop and listen for the next part to her statement. He hoped against hope that the fake Lavender wasn't going to tell Hermione what the locket had made him think and feel.

For a split second it had made perfect sense to him. He had the ways and means to remove Harry Potter from all of his plans that 'The Chosen One' was standing in the way of. He had the sword and, therefore, had that option.

It scared Ron more than anything that the Horcrux had made him think it wasn't only logical, but right to remove Harry from the equation, and if he wasn't much mistaken, Lavender Brown was going to tell Hermione the exact same thing.

'If you don't want to be the person that fails him, that hurts him, that has to put him second best to your career, then simply remove him.'

Ron's heart sank, and in the few seconds he had stopped struggling against the coils around him, the tail whipped back to where it had been before, but this time pinning Ron's hands to his body.

'Ah! No! Shit! Hermione don't! It's not real, remember that! You know it's the Horcrux making you think these things. _She's not real and you'd never hurt me that way!'_

He watched as she knelt down next to him and Lavender and placed the cup upright on the floor. She looked at the fang and rolled it around in her hand.

'Go, on,' Lavender prompted, 'no one would ever know. No one else knows you came down here, and they'd believe anything the brilliant Hermione Granger told them.'

He watched as she held the fang in front of her and saw her knuckles turn white from gripping it so hard.

She looked at him straight in the eyes, gritted her teeth and swung the fang back, ready to strike.

_'Hermione! No!'_

Hatred rose inside her, bubbled through her veins and throbbed inside her head. He could stop her. He could stop her fulfilling her dreams and he would make her feel like she had failed. She couldn't bear failure, of any sort, and he was the one who would most likely make her do that. He would make her choose between him and what she wanted to achieve. He would make her put him first when what she really wanted to do was soar and excel to the heights she knew she was capable of.

She would make the Wizarding World a better place, getting rid of the prejudice that hung over her head and the heads of all Muggle-borns. She would spend her days planning, ordering and making the world better for everyone. And at the end of the day…

She looked at Ron and her stomach squirmed. She gripped and brought it down as hard as she could.

An ear splitting scream filled the room, then a few seconds later, all was quiet.

After a longer time than it should have taken, Ron realised he was free from the clutches of the dead snake. He kicked the corpse away from him and then frantically looked around him.

Behind him the cup lay bent and still skewered by the fang. Hermione had slumped to the side, and the arm she was resting on was shaking violently. Tears streamed down her face and her breathing was uneven and hitched every few breaths.

'Hermione,' Ron whispered.

He fell to the floor next to her and gathered her in his arms. He rocked her and stroked her hair, telling her everything was all right and it was over. For a minute she just hung limp in his arms, but then he felt her wrap her arms around him and grip the robes on his back.

She sobbed into his shoulder and he continued to rock her, stroke her hair and whisper words of comfort to her.

'I'm s…sorry!' she whispered, barely making a sound.

Reluctantly, Ron pulled her away from his body and lifted her chin so he could look in her eyes.

'No! There's no need to be sorry, it was all the Horcrux, believe me, I know it was. It twists every tiny thought you have that doubts any part of you and lays out your fears in front of you. It wasn't you, Hermione. None of it.'

'But I was going to—'

'But you didn't, did you? And neither did I. We both got past it and did the right thing.'

'Ron, I…I don't ever mean to…to hurt you…'

He placed a finger on her lips and shushed her.

'I know, just like I don't ever mean to hurt you, or anyone else for that matter. Please try and let this go, Hermione, it's over, and no one else need ever know about it.'

She nodded and looked at Ron.

'Thank you,' she whispered.

Ron pulled her into one last hug and kissed her hair.

'Are you okay to stand?' he asked her. She nodded and they got to their feet. 'Back upstairs?'

She cleared her throat. 'Yeah, I think we'd better get up there. Who knows what's happened since we've been down here.

She wiped her face dry and retrieved her wand off the floor. She sent a cool stream of air at her face and took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself down.

'Do you want to fly on your own, or do you want me to fly us out of here?'

She smiled at him. 'Would you mind?'

'Not at all.'

They made their way back to the tunnel entrance and to their two brooms.

Hermione mounted the broom and balanced the numerous fangs, the cup and the remaining broom on and around her and then Ron carefully climbed on in front of her.

'Ladies and Gentlemen, if you could please keep your arms inside the carriage, no leaning in the opposite direction to the driver and no falling off, if you wouldn't mind,' Ron said with a grin over his shoulder.

'Your emergency exits are here, here and here,' Hermione continued, pointing around her with her free hand.

'What?' Ron asked, obviously confused.

Hermione chuckled. 'Nothing. Take me for a ride I'll never forget, Ron.'

Ron snorted and Hermione blushed at her own words.

'Whatever the lady wants, she shall get.'

**Fin**


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